Tuesday, May 14, 2013

I had been meaning to make an easily printable version of the Dodecahedron of Space, and today Andrew from the blog Wanderings in the Labyrinth rekindled my interest in doing so. For anyone interested, though I still suggest making one from twelve pentagons as it is a valuable exercise in and of itself, here it is:

Printable Dodecahedron - Click to Enlarge

Note that I did not draw the usual flaps that these paper models usually have for joining adjacent faces. You'll have to do that much all by yourself (it's simply a matter of leaving some extra paper on some of the edges). I would highly recommend printing to something more sturdy than your usual paper, such as card stock, so that it hold up through all of the folding and taping or gluing. You might also consider laminating the whole thing to increase its durability, but in that case normal paper would probably be better.

I very much enjoyed building this, and I've printed a few extras for some of the folks in my lodge; I hope that's ok. I also talked about it on Tumblr, so you may get some extra traffic from that direction.

I'm not sure that my woodworking skills are up to building the Dodecahedron yet, but it's something to work up to. Thanks for the suggestion!

Well, I've built a larger one already. And curiously enough, one of the kids in my school has just been in a production of the The Phantom Tollbooth so I was able to give my dodecahedron to the person who played The Dodecahedron.

I'm thinking about building one which is a sort of 'pop-up book' , with poetry celebrating the various seasons of the year, or maybe the fixed stars in the relevant constellations....